According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the U.S. has officially surpassed 5 million solar installations. "The 5 million milestone comes just eight years after the U.S. achieved its first million in 2016 -- a stark contrast to the four decades it took to reach that initial milestone since the first grid-connected solar project in 1973," reports Electrek. From the report: Since the beginning of 2020, more than half of all U.S. solar installations have come online, and over 25% have been activated since the Inflation Reduction Act became law 20 months ago. Solar arrays have been installed on homes and businesses and as utility-scale solar farms. The U.S. solar market was valued at $51 billion in 2023. Even with changes in state policies, market trends indicate robust growth in solar installations across the U.S. According to SEIA forecasts, the number of solar installations is expected to double to 10 million by 2030 and triple to 15 million by 2034. The residential sector represents 97% of all U.S. solar installations. This sector has consistently set new records for annual installations over the past several years, achieving new highs for five straight years and in 10 out of the last 12 years. The significant growth in residential solar can be attributed to its proven value as an investment for homeowners who wish to manage their energy costs more effectively. California is the frontrunner with 2 million solar installations, though recent state policies have significantly damaged its rooftop solar market. Meanwhile, other states are experiencing rapid growth. For example, Illinois, which had only 2,500 solar installations in 2017, now boasts over 87,000. Similarly, Florida has seen its solar installations surge from 22,000 in 2017 to 235,000 today. By 2030, 22 states or territories are anticipated to surpass 100,000 solar installations. The U.S. has enough solar installed to cover every residential rooftop in the Four Corners states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.

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Longtime Slashdot reader necro81 writes: The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which controls interstate energy infrastructure, approved a rule Monday that should boost new transmission infrastructure and make it easier to connect renewable energy projects. (More coverage here, here, and here.) Some 11,000 projects totaling 2,600 GW of capacity are in planning, waiting to break ground, or connect to the grid. But they're stymied by the need for costly upgrades, or simply waiting for review. The frustrations are many. Each proposed project undergoes a lengthy grid-impact study and assessed the cost of necessary upgrades. Each project is considered in isolation, regardless of whether similar projects are happening nearby that could share the upgrade costs or auger different improvements. The planning process tends to be reactive -- examining only the applications in front of them -- rather than considering trends over the coming years. It's a first-come, first-served queue: if one project is ready to break ground, it must wait behind another project that's still securing funding or permitting. Two years in development, the dryly-named Improvements to Generator Interconnection Procedures and Agreements directs utility operators to plan infrastructure improvements with a 20-yr forecast of new energy sources and increased demand. Rather than examining each project in isolation, similar projects will be clustered and examined together. Instead of a First-Come, First-Served serial process, operators will instead examine First-Ready, allowing shovel-ready projects to jump the queue. The expectation is that these new rules will speed up and streamline the process of developing and connecting new energy projects through more holistic planning, penalties for delays, sensible cost-sharing for upgrades, and justification for long-term investments.

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Researchers believe they've discovered a new material structure that can improve the energy storage of capacitors. The structure allows for storage while improving the efficiency of ultrafast charging and discharging. The new find needs optimization but has the potential to help power electric vehicles. * An anonymous reader shared this report from Popular Mechanics: In a study published in Science, lead author Sang-Hoon Bae, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, demonstrates a novel heterostructure that curbs energy loss, enabling capacitors to store more energy and charge rapidly without sacrificing durability... Within capacitors, ferroelectric materials offer high maximum polarization. That's useful for ultra-fast charging and discharging, but it can limit the effectiveness of energy storage or the "relaxation time" of a conductor. "This precise control over relaxation time holds promise for a wide array of applications and has the potential to accelerate the development of highly efficient energy storage systems," the study authors write. Bae makes the change — one he unearthed while working on something completely different — by sandwiching 2D and 3D materials in atomically thin layers, using chemical and nonchemical bonds between each layer. He says a thin 3D core inserts between two outer 2D layers to produce a stack that's only 30 nanometers thick, about 1/10th that of an average virus particle... The sandwich structure isn't quite fully conductive or nonconductive. This semiconducting material, then, allows the energy storage, with a density up to 19 times higher than commercially available ferroelectric capacitors, while still achieving 90 percent efficiency — also better than what's currently available. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.

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The Royal Institution of Australia is a national non-profit hub for science communication, publishing the science magazine Cosmos four times a year. This month they argued that small modular nuclear reactors "don't add up as a viable energy source." Proponents assert that SMRs would cost less to build and thus be more affordable. However, when evaluated on the basis of cost per unit of power capacity, SMRs will actually be more expensive than large reactors. This 'diseconomy of scale' was demonstrated by the now-terminated proposal to build six NuScale Power SMRs (77 megawatts each) in Idaho in the United States. The final cost estimate of the project per megawatt was around 250 percent more than the initial per megawatt cost for the 2,200 megawatts Vogtle nuclear power plant being built in Georgia, US. Previous small reactors built in various parts of America also shut down because they were uneconomical. The cost was four to six times the cost of the same electricity from wind and solar photovoltaic plants, according to estimates from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Energy Market Operator. "The money invested in nuclear energy would save far more carbon dioxide if it were instead invested in renewables," the article agues: Small reactors also raise all of the usual concerns associated with nuclear power, including the risk of severe accidents, the linkage to nuclear weapons proliferation, and the production of radioactive waste that has no demonstrated solution because of technical and social challenges. One 2022 study calculated that various radioactive waste streams from SMRs would be larger than the corresponding waste streams from existing light water reactors... Nuclear energy itself has been declining in importance as a source of power: the fraction of the world's electricity supplied by nuclear reactors has declined from a maximum of 17.5 percent in 1996 down to 9.2 percent in 2022. All indications suggest that the trend will continue if not accelerate. The decline in the global share of nuclear power is driven by poor economics: generating power with nuclear reactors is costly compared to other low-carbon, renewable sources of energy and the difference between these costs is widening. Thanks to Slashdot reader ZipNada for sharing the article.

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A tokamak in France achieved a new record in fusion plasma by using tungsten to encase its reaction, which enabled the sustainment of hotter and denser plasma for longer periods than previous carbon-based designs. Quartz reports: A tokamak is a torus- (doughnut-) shaped fusion device that confines plasma using magnetic fields, allowing scientists to fiddle with the superheated material and induce fusion reactions. The recent achievement was made in WEST (tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak), a tokamak operated by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). WEST was injected with 1.15 gigajoules of power and sustained a plasma of about 50 million degrees Celsius for six minutes. It achieved this record after scientists encased the tokamak's interior in tungsten, a metal with an extraordinarily high melting point. Researchers from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory used an X-ray detector inside the tokamak to measure aspects of the plasma and the conditions that made it possible. "These are beautiful results," said Xavier Litaudon, a scientist with CEA and chair of the Coordination on International Challenges on Long duration OPeration (CICLOP), in a PPPL release. "We have reached a stationary regime despite being in a challenging environment due to this tungsten wall."

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ArchieBunker quotes a report from Bloomberg: Texas electricity prices soared almost 100-fold as a high number of power-plant outages raised concerns of a potential evening shortfall. Spot prices at the North Hub, which includes Dallas, jumped to more than $3,000 a megawatt-hour just before 7 p.m. local time, versus about $32 at the same time Tuesday, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. This morning, Ercot, as the state's main grid operator is known, issued a "watch" for a potential capacity reserve shortage from about 7-9 p.m., meaning the buffer of spare supplies could fall to low enough levels to call on back-up generation, cancel or delay outages or curb usage. The conditions are the tightest of the year so far and raises the risk of prices rising to the $5,000 cap -- which they last did on April 16, when Ercot also warned of a potential shortfall. Unusually hot weather in the region has boosted demand for cooling and lowered the efficiency of many power plants. Wind output has also fallen from a day earlier and there are more outages. "Ercot has not called for conservation this evening," it said by email. "The grid is operating under normal conditions at this time."

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Renewable energy accounted for more than 30% of the world's electricity for the first time last year, according to climate thinktank Ember. The Guardian reports: Clean electricity has already helped to slow the growth in fossil fuels by almost two-thirds in the past 10 years, according to the report by climate thinktank Ember. It found that renewables have grown from 19% of electricity in 2000 to more than 30% of global electricity last year. Solar was the main supplier of electricity growth, according to Ember, adding more than twice as much new electricity generation as coal in 2023. It was the fastest-growing source of electricity for the 19th consecutive year, and also became the largest source of new electricity for the second year running, after surpassing wind power. The first comprehensive review of global electricity data covers 80 countries, which represent 92% of the world's electricity demand, as well as historic data for 215 countries. The surge in clean electricity is expected to power a 2% decrease in global fossil fuel generation in the year ahead, according to Ember. [...] World leaders are aiming to grow renewables to 60% of global electricity by 2030 under an agreement struck at the UN's Cop28 climate change conference in December. This would require countries to triple their current renewable electricity capacity in the next six years, which would almost halve power sector emissions.

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The Washington Post reports that wind turbines "only take up five percent of the land where they've been built, new research shows." The rest of the space can be used for other purposes, such as agriculture, according to a study published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology. This means developers could fit turbines in places that are often perceived as unsuitable for a wind farm. The new study highlights that turbines and existing human development, such as agriculture, cannot only share the same area, but also that building wind farms where there are already roads and other infrastructure could help reduce impacts on the land. "Clever siting, use of existing infrastructure, multiple use of landscapes — all these things ... can really contribute to solutions in areas where wind power is acceptable to the local people," said Sarah Jordaan, the study's principal investigator. Historically, planning studies for wind farms have often assumed that turbines would disturb all the land at the site and leave the area unusable for anything else, said Jordaan, an associate professor in the department of civil engineering at McGill University. The study's findings provide a more accurate accounting of how much land is needed for wind farms, she added.

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The Washington Post reports that wind turbines "only take up five percent of the land where they've been built, new research shows." The rest of the space can be used for other purposes, such as agriculture, according to a study published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology. This means developers could fit turbines in places that are often perceived as unsuitable for a wind farm. The new study highlights that turbines and existing human development, such as agriculture, cannot only share the same area, but also that building wind farms where there are already roads and other infrastructure could help reduce impacts on the land. "Clever siting, use of existing infrastructure, multiple use of landscapes — all these things ... can really contribute to solutions in areas where wind power is acceptable to the local people," said Sarah Jordaan, the study's principal investigator. Historically, planning studies for wind farms have often assumed that turbines would disturb all the land at the site and leave the area unusable for anything else, said Jordaan, an associate professor in the department of civil engineering at McGill University. The study's findings provide a more accurate accounting of how much land is needed for wind farms, she added.

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A new battery from Energizer comes with "color alert technology" to alert parents if their child has swallowed one. When the coin lithium battery comes into contact with saliva, it activates a blue dye "so parents and caregivers know that medical attention could be required," reports the New York Times. The battery also features more secure packaging and a nontoxic bitter coating. From the report: The new coin lithium battery features more secure packaging, a nontoxic bitter coating to discourage swallowing and "color alert technology" that activates a blue dye when the battery comes into contact with moisture, like saliva, so parents and caregivers know that medical attention could be required. The new battery was announced in a video last week by Energizer and Trista Hamsmith, whose 18-month-old daughter died after swallowing a button battery from a remote control. Ms. Hamsmith founded a nonprofit organization focused on children's safety, successfully advocated for legislation, known as Reese's Law, that requires a secure compartment of the batteries in products that use them as well as stronger warning labels on all packaging, and is now working to make the batteries themselves safer. Ingested coin or button batteries result in thousands of emergency hospital visits each year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which notes that "the consequences of a child swallowing a battery can be immediate, devastating and deadly." "A button cell battery can burn through a child's throat or esophagus in as little as two hours if swallowed," according to the agency. Secure packaging and bitter coatings for batteries have long existed, but "the massive breakthrough here is the color alert technology, which helps give caretakers that indicator that something has happened," Jeff Roth, the global category leader for batteries at Energizer, said in an interview on Wednesday. "The most significant part about this is getting help early in the process," he said. "That's really what the color alert technology allows the family to do."

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AmiMoJo shares a report from Tech Times: China has reached a major landmark in green transportation with the launch of the world's largest fully electric container ship. Developed and manufactured by China Ocean Shipping Group (Cosco), the vessel is now operating a regular service route between Shanghai and Nanjing, aiming to reduce emissions significantly along its journey. The Greenwater 01, an all-electric container ship, is positioning itself to be a shipping industry pioneer. Equipped with a main battery exceeding 50,000 kilowatt-hours, the vessel can accommodate additional battery boxes for longer voyages. These battery boxes, each containing 1,600 kilowatt-hours of electricity and similar in size to standard 20-foot containers, provide flexibility in extending the ship's travel range. With 24 battery boxes onboard, the Greenwater 01 can complete a journey consuming 80,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is equivalent to saving 15 tons of fuel compared to a standard container ship, highlighting the efficiency of electric propulsion systems. According to Cosco, the vessel can reduce CO2 emissions by 2,918 tons per year, which is equivalent to taking 2,035 family cars off the road or planting 160,000 trees.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: U.S. wind power slipped last year for the first time in a quarter-century due to weaker-than-normal Midwest breezes, underscoring the challenge of integrating volatile renewable energy sources into the grid. Power produced by turbines slipped 2% in 2023, even after developers added 6.2 gigawatts of new capacity, according to a government report Tuesday. The capacity factor for the country's wind fleet -- how much energy it's actually generating versus its maximum possible output -- declined to an eight-year low of 33.5%. Most of that decline was driven by the central US, a region densely dotted with turbines. Wind is a key component of the effort to cut carbon emissions, but the data highlights the downside of relying on intermittent energy sources tied to the effects of global weather. Last year's low wind speeds came during El Nino, a warming of the equatorial Pacific that tends to weaken trade winds. La Nina, the Pacific cooling pattern that dominated in 2022 and is poised to return later this year, usually has the opposite effect. The U.S. Energy Information Administration shared the findings in a report published earlier today.

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An anonymous reader shared this report from CNN: Five times the size of Paris. Visible from space. The world's biggest energy plant. Enough electricity to power Switzerland. The scale of the project transforming swathes of barren salt desert on the edge of western India into one of the most important sources of clean energy anywhere on the planet is so overwhelming that the man in charge can't keep up. "I don't even do the math any more," Sagar Adani told CNN in an interview last week. Adani is executive director of Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL). He's also the nephew of Gautam Adani, Asia's second richest man, whose $100 billion fortune stems from the Adani Group, India's biggest coal importer and a leading miner of the dirty fuel. Founded in 1988, the conglomerate has businesses in fields ranging from ports and thermal power plants to media and cements. Its clean energy unit AGEL is building the sprawling solar and wind power plant in the western Indian state of Gujarat at a cost of about $20 billion. It will be the world's biggest renewable park when it is finished in about five years, and should generate enough clean electricity to power 16 million Indian homes... [T]he park will cover more than 200 square miles and be the planet's largest power plant regardless of the energy source, AGEL said. CNN adds that the company "plans to invest $100 billion into energy transition over the next decade, with 70% of the investments ear-marked for clean energy."

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"In less than 15 years, battery costs have fallen by more than 90%," according to a new report from the International Energy Agency, "one of the fastest declines ever seen in clean energy technologies." And it's expected to get even cheaper, reports Reuters: An expected sharp fall in battery costs for energy storage in coming years will accelerate the shift to renewable energy from fossil fuels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday... The total capital costs of battery storage are due to tumble by up to 40% by 2030, the Paris-based watchdog said in its Batteries and Secure Energy Transitions report. "The combination of solar PV (photovoltaic) and batteries is today competitive with new coal plants in India," said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. "And just in the next few years, it will be cheaper than new coal in China and gas-fired power in the United States. Batteries are changing the game before our eyes." [...] The global market for energy storage doubled last year to over 90 gigawatt-hours (GWh), the report said... The slide in battery costs will also help provide electricity to millions of people without access, cutting by nearly half the average electricity costs of mini-grids with solar PV coupled with batteries by 2030, the IEA said. The Los Angeles Times notes one place adopting the tech is California: Standing in the middle of a solar farm in Yolo County, [California governor] Newsom announced the state now had battery storage systems with the capacity of more than 10,000 megawatts — about 20% of the 52,000 megawatts the state says is needed to meet its climate goals. Although Newsom acknowledged it isn't yet enough to eliminate blackouts...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles's urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed -- enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State's electricity. But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there's not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are "curtailed" -- essentially, thrown away. In response, California has cut back incentives for rooftop solar and slowed the pace of installing panels. But the diminishing economic returns may slow the development of solar in a state that has tried to move to renewable energy. And as other states build more and more solar plants of their own, they may soon face the same problems. Curtailing solar isn't technically difficult -- according to Paul Denholm, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, it's equivalent to flipping a switch for grid operators. But throwing away free power raises electricity prices. It has also undercut the benefits of installing rooftop solar. Since the 1990s, California has been paying owners of rooftop solar panels when they export their energy to the grid. That meant that rooftop solar owners got $0.20 to $0.30 for each kilowatt-hour of electricity that they dispatched. But a year ago, the state changed this system, known as "net-metering," and now only compensates new solar panel owners for how much their power is worth to the grid. In the spring, when the duck curve is deepest, that number can dip close to zero. Customers can get more money back if they install batteries and provide power to the grid in the early evening or morning. The change has sparked a huge backlash from Californians and rooftop solar companies, which say that their businesses are flagging. Indeed, Wood Mackenzie predicts that California residential solar installations in 2024 will fall by around 40 percent. Some state politicians are now trying to reverse the rule. "Under the CPUC's leadership California is responsible for the largest loss of solar jobs in our nation's history," Bernadette del Chiaro, the executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, said in a statement referring to California's public utility commission. But experts say that it reflects how the economics of solar are changing in a state that has gone all-in on the technology. [...] To cope, [California's grid operator, known as CAISO] is selling some excess power to nearby states; California is also planning to install additional storage and batteries to hold solar power until later in the afternoon. Transmission lines that can carry electricity to nearby regions will also help -- some of the lost power comes from regions where there simply aren't enough power lines to carry a sudden burst of solar. Denholm says the state is starting to take the steps needed to deal with the glut. "There are fundamental limits to how much solar we can put on the grid before you start needing a lot of storage," Denholm said. "You can't just sit around and do nothing." Further reading: The Energy Institute discusses this problem in a recent blog post. Since 2020, the residential electricity rates in California have risen by as much as 40% after adjusting for inflation. While there's been "a lot of finger-pointing about the cause of these increases," the authors note that the impact on rates is multiplied when customers install their own generation and buy fewer kilowatts-hours from the grid because those households "contribute less towards all the fixed costs in the system." These fixed costs include: vegetation management, grid hardening, distribution line undergrounding, EV charging stations, subsidies for low income customers, energy efficiency programs, and the poles and wires that we all rely on whether we are taking electricity off the grid or putting it onto the grid from our rooftop PV systems. "Since those fixed costs still need to be paid, rates go up, shifting costs onto the kWhs still being bought from the grid."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: To accommodate tech companies' pivots to artificial intelligence, tech companies are increasingly investing in ways to power AI's immense electricity needs. Most recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman invested in Exowatt, a company using solar power to feed data centers, according to the Wall Street Journal. That's on the heals of OpenAI partner, Microsoft, working on getting approval for nuclear energy to help power its AI operations. Last year Amazon, which is a major investor in AI company Anthropic, said it invested in more than 100 renewable energy projects, making it the "world's largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fourth year in a row."

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Bloomberg looks at America's biggest operator of private electrical vehicle charging infrastructure: Amazon. "In a little more than two years, Amazon has installed more than 17,000 chargers at about 120 warehouses around the U.S." — and had Rivian build 13,500 custom electric delivery vans. Amazon has a long way to go. The Seattle-based company says its operations emitted about 71 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2022, up by almost 40% since Jeff Bezos's 2019 vow that his company would eventually stop contributing to the emissions warming the planet. Many of Amazon's emissions come from activities — air freight, ocean shipping, construction and electronics manufacturing, to name a few — that lack a clear, carbon-free alternative, today or any time soon. The company has not made much progress on decarbonization of long-haul trucking, whose emissions tend to be concentrated in industrial and outlying areas rather than the big cities that served as the backdrop for Amazon's electric delivery vehicle rollout... Another lesson Amazon learned is one the company isn't keen to talk about: Going green can be expensive, at least initially. Based on the type of chargers Amazon deploys — almost entirely midtier chargers called Level 2 in the industry — the hardware likely cost between $50 million and $90 million, according to Bloomberg estimates based on cost estimates supplied by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Factoring in costs beyond the plugs and related hardware — like digging through a parking lot to lay wires or set up electrical panels and cabinets — could double that sum. Amazon declined to comment on how much it spent on its EV charging push. In addition to the expense of the chargers, electric vehicle-fleet operators are typically on the hook for utility upgrades. When companies request the sort of increases to electrical capacity that Amazon has — the Maple Valley warehouse has three megawatts of power for its chargers — they tend to pay for them, making the utility whole for work done on behalf of a single customer. Amazon says it pays upgrade costs as determined by utilities, but that in some locations the upgrades fit within the standard service power companies will handle out of their own pocket. The article also includes this quote from Kellen Schefter, transportation director at the Edison Electric Institute trade group (which worked with Amazon on its electricity needs). "Amazon's scale matters. If Amazon can show that it meets their climate goals while also meeting their package-delivery goals, we can show this all actually works."

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The Washington Post reports on a new situation in Virginia: There, massive data centers with computers processing nearly 70 percent of global digital traffic are gobbling up electricity at a rate officials overseeing the power grid say is unsustainable unless two things happen: Several hundred miles of new transmission lines must be built, slicing through neighborhoods and farms in Virginia and three neighboring states. And antiquated coal-powered electricity plants that had been scheduled to go offline will need to keep running to fuel the increasing need for more power, undermining clean energy goals... The $5.2 billion effort has fueled a backlash against data centers through the region, prompting officials in Virginia to begin studying the deeper impacts of an industry they've long cultivated for the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue it brings to their communities. Critics say it will force residents near the [West Virginia] coal plants to continue living with toxic pollution, ironically to help a state — Virginia — that has fully embraced clean energy. And utility ratepayers in the affected areas will be forced to pay for the plan in the form of higher bills, those critics say. But PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator, says the plan is necessary to maintain grid reliability amid a wave of fossil fuel plant closures in recent years, prompted by the nation's transition to cleaner power. Power lines will be built across four states in a $5.2 billion effort that, relying on coal plants that were meant to be shuttered, is designed to keep the electric grid from failing amid spiking energy demands. Cutting through farms and neighborhoods, the plan converges on Northern Virginia, where a growing data center industry will need enough extra energy to power 6 million homes by 2030... There are nearly 300 data centers now in Virginia. With Amazon Web Services pursuing a $35 billion data center expansion in Virginia, rural portions of the state are the industry's newest target for development. The growth means big revenue for the localities that host the football-field-size buildings. Loudoun [County] collects $600 million in annual taxes on the computer equipment inside the buildings, making it easier to fund schools and other services. Prince William [County], the second-largest market, collects $100 million per year. The article adds that one data center "can require 50 times the electricity of a typical office building, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. "Multiple-building data center complexes, which have become the norm, require as much as 14 to 20 times that amount." One small power company even told the grid operator that data centers were already consuming 59% of the power they produce...

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: In a major clean energy benchmark, wind, solar, and hydro exceeded 100% of demand on California's main grid for 30 of the past 38 days. Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z. Jacobson has been tracking California's renewables performance, and he shares his findings on Twitter (X) when the state breaks records. Jacobson notes that supply exceeds demand for "0.25-6 h per day," and that's an important fact. The continuity lies not in renewables running the grid for the entire day but in the fact that it's happening on a consistent daily basis, which has never been achieved before. At the two-week record mark, Ian Magruder at Rewiring America made this great point on LinkedIn: "And what makes it even better is that California has the largest grid-connected battery storage facility in the world (came online in January ...), meaning those batteries were filling up with excess energy from the sun all afternoon today and are now deploying as we speak to offset a good chunk of the methane gas generation that California still uses overnight." On April 2, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) recommended 26 new transmission projects worth $6.1 billion, with a big number being devoted to offshore wind. In response, Jacobson predicted on April 4 that California will entirely be on renewables and battery storage 24/7 by 2035.

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